


Anchors

by frith_in_thorns



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Daily life on the Hephaestus, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, dorks in space, where something always goes wrong, worrying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 06:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11891637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frith_in_thorns/pseuds/frith_in_thorns
Summary: Another day, another Hephaestus malfunction making Minkowski's life miserable. She's definitely fine, though.Plus, broken comm units, a new reason to miss gravity, Edward Cullen duties, and the who-should-be-yelled-at game.





	Anchors

**Author's Note:**

> I just inhaled all of Wolf 359 in a fortnight and I am not okay. So I am writing fic. This one is more a practice to get the voices down, because when in doubt I write head trauma. (I'm claiming this as a fill for the "hiding an injury/illness square on my [hc_bingo card](http://frith-in-thorns.dreamwidth.org/151598.html) too!)

The walls spun past, resisting attempts to grab a handhold. Vibrating from the — decompression, demolition, dammed loud _something_ — 

"Hera?" she croaked, and some flat plane impacted her side, knocking the breath out of her with a _whoomph_ , but the spin finally slowed.

"Minkowski, are you okay? What happened? — no, that's my job. Are you okay?"

"Fine," she snapped, because it was an answer that had no need for conscious thought. "Hera, sitrep." She reached for her comm, and everything melted down into white and black across her vision.

"— Lieutenant, _please_ —"

Eyes. Bright. Hurt. "What…"

"Please don't do that!" Hera sounded rattled, fraught. "Your comm unit's broken."

"Oh." She blinked, painfully. Metal walls rotated slowly, blanked out by dancing white patches. 

"I'm alerting the others," Hera said. "I'll tell them —"

That sparked off some surge to action. "Tell me first. What's going on?"

"It's _not_ my fault, okay," Hera said. "An exterior wall buckled. You know all those hull fractures, and the extreme pressures and stresses we've been subjected to lately? Something gave. And…" Her voice stuttered with palpable reluctance. "Well, I think you might be trapped."

Minkowski gave herself the luxury of groaning, slowly and loudly. "Fantastic."

"Not, like, trapped in a small space," Hera hurried to reassure her. "It's this whole corner of the station. Several hallways."

"I love how you think that's _better_."

Hera's pauses could speak volumes. Or not speak them. "So about alerting the others."

She tried for a handhold again as the nearest wall drifted past, and caught it with her fingertips. So long as she didn't move her neck, she could kid herself that everything was normal. Sort of. "Tell them I'm fine."

"Lieutenant…"

"Hera, tell them I'm _fine_. That's an order." The thought of having to confront her own worry was draining. She needed to get out. Everything else would be tidier pushed aside.

A sulky electronic sigh.

Minkowski stared at the metal bar her fingers were clenched around, working up to more movement. "Hera."

"O- _kay_ , but I am absolutely not going to be held accountable for this."

* * *

"I did think we'd gone too many days without an emergency," Lovelace said, very dryly. "Whose fault is this one?"

"You're leaping very quickly to apportioning blame," Hera pointed out. 

"Could that possibly be because —"

"Okay, let's all chill!" Eiffel spread his hands, glaring at Lovelace. It wasn't really possible to glare at Hera, so he settled on a general aggravated air. "I think we're forgetting what's important. Minkowski's trapped? Is she okay?"

"She says she's fine," Hera said. "Don't worry, life support systems are all fully operational. Everything's surprisingly functional, really, except."

"Except that part of the hull's caved in," Lovelace suggested.

"Well, yes. That. But things happen sometimes, don't they?"

Which left a lovely opening for the who-should-get-yelled-at game to begin again. Eiffel preemptively leapt in once more. " _So._ Minkowski's trapped, but for once we're not on a life or death countdown timer. Which means we don't have to panic while we work on her Great Escape plan, but she'd probably prefer we actually work on it and not spend all day arguing. Right?"

"Right," Lovelace agreed, although the promise to pick the argument back up at the earliest opportunity was clearly there. "Okay, first thing's first. Hera, why isn't her comm working?"

"It smashed," Hera said.

"How?"

"Uh… against a bulkhead?"

There was a pause. Lovelace broke it. "Hera, why do I get the distinct feeling you don't want to tell us something?"

"You do?" Hera's voice was chirpy. Extremely suspiciously so. "Uh… that's interesting?"

Lovelace folded her arms. "Out with it."

"Out with what, Captain?"

A useful skill to develop when interacting with AIs (from a sample size of one, anyway) was that of recalling and examining a conversation for loopholes. Eiffel held up a hand to stop Lovelace shortcutting this route and going straight to yelling. "Hera. _Is_ Minkowski all right?"

Another pause. "She said to tell you she's fine."

Lovelace had caught on. "Yes, but what do you say?"

"Um. That she's fine?"

"Okay," Eiffel said, patiently. "But on the scale of, I don't know, from 'Fine!'" — he chirped the word enthusiastically — "to 'F.. f…ine…'" — choked out between death rattles — "where would you rate her?"

"Oh." Hera paused for thought. "Fiiiiiiiine?" She dragged it out insincerely.

Lovelace groaned. "Oh, for gods' sake. Hera, could you possibly stop wasting everyones' time, especially Minkowski's?"

"She made me _promise_ ," Hera muttered sulkily. 

"Hera —"

"Okay, okay Captain! So her comm unit smashed because… because she was wearing it on the side of her head that hit the wall."

They digested that.

"Oh my god," Eiffel said, and pushed off down the corridor.

* * *

She'd had a concussion before, but it was much worse in space. Gravity; she had never appreciated gravity enough. It was an anchor in a metaphorical sense as well as a literal one. She pressed her forehead against cold metal and tried to recall the sensation of knowing which way was up.

"Lieutenant? Are you — can you hear me?"

"Hi, Hera," Minkowski said. 

"How are you feeling? Your head —"

"Fine," she said, curtly.

"You're still bleeding, you know."

"Wonderful. Thanks for keeping me informed."

"I'm just being _concerned._ " Now Hera sounded distinctly frosty.

Minkowski groaned. "Sorry. You're right. I'm having kind of a crappy day." She opened her eyes. Tiny beads of blood were floating in the air. This was going to be a nightmare to clean up. "Did you have something to tell me?"

"Yep! I've got some news for you."

"And let me guess, there's some good news and some bad news. Just tell me."

"Not really," Hera reassured her. "I mean, it's… kinda good and kinda bad?"

"As long as the bad isn't that more of the _Hephaestus_ is collapsing."

Hera huffed. "Look, it was a one time event! Anyway, Captain Lovelace and Officer Eiffel are trying to fix the damage now. I estimate it will take them about three hours. Definitely not more than five."

Minkowski considered drifting where she was for another five hours, untethered and semi-conscious. Going crazy. No up, no down, just a steady nauseating spin inside her skull. "No."

"Uh… what?" Then: "Lieutenant, that's a really _terrible_ idea."

"Never said it wasn't."

* * *

"Officer Eiffel?"

Breaks were good. Breaks were especially good from trying to uncrumple a wall without damaging anything else. Eiffel abandoned the basically-futile effort he was currently putting in. "Yeah? How's the Commander?"

"Oh, you know," Hera said, brightly. "As we've previously established, completely fine, except she wasn't happy waiting for you and decided to go out through an air vent instead."

"Good for her?" Lovelace suggested. "Can you guide us to where she's coming out?"

"Well, I'd love to," Hera said. The brightness was chipping, irritation and worry showing through. "Except for the fact that she's stopped moving. I did _tell_ her it was a stupid idea."

Lovelace growled. "Why did you let her do that?"

"What should I have done, electrocuted the hatch?"

"Well, I suppose," Lovelace conceded. She made a frustrated sound. "I thought we'd have this mess out of the way by now."

Now it was Eiffel's turn for a disbelieving noise. "It's not like you to be that stunningly optimistic, Captain."

"We all have off days." She addressed Hera. "So where is she?"

"On the level above you. There's an access panel about ten metres from her."

It wasn't hard to find with Hera to guide them. Lovelace levered the panel off the wall with quite unnecessary force. "Minkowski?" she yelled down the vent.

"Commander?" Eiffel added his voice.

"You stay out here and be my anchor," Lovelace told him. "Find something to use as a tether. Then I'm going in there."

"There's a spool of insulated triple-thickness wire in the utility closet," Hera interjected helpfully.

"Why do I have to be the one to stay out here?" Eiffel demanded.

"Because I outrank you. Now shut up and get me that wire."

* * *

"Minkowski… you there?"

"Hera?" No, wrong voice. "Lovelace? You're here?" 

Wherever she was. Somewhere dark. She tried to move to see better, and whimpered as she banged her head into something and a chain-reaction of pain flooded her senses.

"For the love of god, Minkowski, stay still. No, stretch out your arms in front of you if you can."

Comprehension caught up with her as she — cautiously — complied, moving slowly so that she didn't bump into any of the vent's sides again. "Hera sent you?"

"Once she told us you were unconscious in a vent we didn't need to be _sent_ anywhere." Lovelace's voice was very tart. "This struck you as a good plan? Really?"

Minkowski groaned. Then her outstretched hands met Lovelace's, and she decided that gripping them tightly counted as an answer. 

"Eiffel!" Lovelace shouted.

"Owww, not so loud."

"Stop complaining while you're being rescued." 

Lovelace's hands jerked, and then began to exert a pull. Minkowski let herself be towed along, her knees and boots banging against the duct. She kept her head tucked down between her arms, and trusted Lovelace to keep her steady enough.

Then Lovelace let go of her, out of the vent and no longer blocking the light. Minkowski screwed her eyes shut. It hurt. Also, she had just realised there was a 90-degree angle to get into the main corridor, and that was rather too much to contemplate navigating.

But there were two sets of hands to carefully guide her out. "Jesus, Commander, you look like you're turning into the Red Skull."

Well, that sounded positive. 

"Hera, you didn't mention — well, never mind."

"What, that there's more blood on the outside of her head than in?"

"Real tactful," Minkowski said. She decided that there was no real benefit to having her eyes open. "Nice to know you're always reliable."

"Minkowski, shut up," Lovelace said. "Eiffel, you too. Hera — I will be having _words_. About _everything._ "

"It's still not my fault!" Hera protested. Then, more guiltily, she said, "I'm really sorry, though, Lieutenant."

"It's okay, I'm fine," Minkowski said, without thinking.

There was a long pause. 

"If you say that again within the next twenty-four hours…" Lovelace groaned. "I _will_ put you back in the vent."

* * *

She drifted out of a doze, pain-free. Wrapped-in-cotton-wool warm. Hooray for whatever she'd been injected with. Good stuff. She tested the bed straps, enough to reassure herself that she could wriggle free if she needed to, and then subsided.

The med bay was dimly lit. Hilbert's old equipment cast Frankenstein shadows. Cosy, though.

Eiffel was floating in the middle of the room reading his stupid copy of Entertainment Weekly.

Her throat made a hoarse squeak at first, and she had to swallow a couple of times before she could talk. "What are you doing?"

"You're awake," Eiffel said. He drifted closer. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Three." She had a comment somewhere — _Are our medical facilities really in this bad a shape?_ — but it got lost during the trip from her brain to her tongue. Cotton wool, yeah.

"Well, that's a relief. No amnesia or anything? You still know who I am?"

"Unfortunately." She didn't have enough energy to build up much sarcasm, though. "Shouldn't you be getting rack time?"

He looked offended. "Um, and leave you unmonitored, post serious head trauma? What kind of friend do you think I am?"

She raised her eyebrows at him. "One who lives on a station with an AI who doesn't need sleep?"

"I did say I'd be monitoring you closely," Hera put in. 

"It's not that I think you wouldn't!" Eiffel gestured widely with his hand. "I just… Look, I feel better this way, okay?"

Minkowski sighed, but also tried not to smile. "Okay. If you insist."

Eiffel's smile wasn't in the least bit hidden. He beamed like a puppy. "And we're done with the whole, _I'm Lieutenant Minkowski, I'm hardcore even when my brains are sloshing around the station_ shtick, right? Because it wasn't terribly convincing."

She groaned. "That is _not_ me. Seriously, why do you always make my voice sound like that?"

"It's done with love, Commander." He caught her look, and hastily added, "and with respect. Lots of respect."

It would be a lot of effort to get up and punch him. And it would probably make her start hurting again. She closed her eyes instead. "I'm going back to sleep," she said. "Right now."

Except she didn't, because the med bay door creaked open. "Don't worry," Eiffel said. "It's just the Captain here to take over my Edward Cullen duties."

"Is she awake?" Lovelace asked.

"No," Minkowski grumbled. 

"Someone made her grumpy," Hera said. "Naming no names."

"Officer Eiffel, you're relieved for the night," Lovelace said. "Leave your contraband behind."

"Fine." Eiffel handed over the magazine with some reluctance. "It had better come back to me in pristine condition."

This level of pre-arrangement was faintly baffling. "Really," Minkowski protested. "You don't have to stay on watch with me all night. I'm a big girl."

Lovelace patted her shoulder. "We know that," she said. "And you're _fine_ , right? But we want to, and you don't get to give orders while you're on medical leave." She paused suddenly. "Unless you really _don't_ want us here, of course."

That cotton wool feeling. She could blame it for anything, in the morning. "No," she admitted. "I don't mind you being here."

"And I'm here as well, obviously," Hera put in. She must have been feeling left out.

"Obviously," Minkowski said. She yawned hugely and curled back up into soft darkness.

"Goodnight, Lieutenant," Hera murmured. 

"Eiffel, go to _bed_ ," she heard Lovelace order, but he hadn't left by the time she fell asleep.


End file.
